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In 1955 the Council as required by Section 1 of the Housing Rent
and Repair Act, 1954 caused a survey to be made of the District for
the purpose of estimating the number of unfit houses in the District.
415 houses were found to come within this category. Since the date
of this estimate 97 houses have been included in clearance areas and
50 houses have been dealt with as individual unfit houses. In addition
to the above 200 houses have been removed from the list due to
works of repair carried out by the owners of the premises. In a few
cases a further detailed inspection has shown that the premises are
not in fact in such a condition as to warrant demolition. This leaves
68 houses still to be dealt with. At the present moment inspections
are being made of these premises as it appears that in a considerable
number of these works of repairs have been carried out by the
owners.
PET FOODS
During the year an investigation was carried out with a view to
assessing whether any risk might be involved in the sale of certain
pet foods in shops, mainly fish shops, where food for human consumption
is also sold. The bacteriological condition of some pet foods
has been suspect for some time and the rising popularity of keeping
pets with the corresponding rise in the demand for pet foods has given
some concern in public health circles.
It has become common practice for fish shops to sell pet foods and
those foods which have proved most popular are imported horse flesh
and a manufactured product containing approximately 60% of meat.
Unfortunately much of the horse flesh is accompanied by labels or
cards stating that it is or has been passed as suitable for human
consumption. Whilst the meat is, in fact, not diseased, its bacteriological
condition has often left much to be desired.
Between April and September 25 samples of manufactured pet
food and 26 samples of horse flesh were sampled. Of these 10 and 14
samples respectively showed contamination with salmonella organisms.
The percentage of unsatisfactory samples was rather higher than that
obtained by Drs. Galbraith, Taylor and Cavanagh at the Central
Public Health Laboratory, Colindale, in an extensive survey carried
out in four different districts. The examination of all the samples was
carried out at the Colindale Laboratory and I am grateful to these
doctors and to Dr. Betty Hobbs for their help in this matter and for
the information so readily supplied whenever queries were posed.
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